Do football scholarship offers come in the month of March? If so, where are mine at?

by Recruiting-101

When thinking about this question, I do have to once again repeat what I wrote in an article last week. Out of all the months in the year, March is one of the slowest and most boring for junior football recruits.

There are a few reasons as to why this is. Most college coaches at Division I-A level have already started peaking ahead to the upcoming classes and know who the best players are. By the time March rolls around, in a perfect world you should already have sent your highlight tape out shortly after the season ended. The coaches should have already evaluated this because you get things done early, right?

There are usually two camps as far as getting your highlight video done goes. The first is the family that has followed the advice on this site and prepared for it early. They lined everything up before the season started and when the season was over, they sent their best game tapes to be cut and included in the highlight video. If you followed this path, then there is no doubt that you likely already got the highlight tape out to the coaches to look at prior to the month of March.

The other camp is the one that is not quite prepared for the football recruiting process. There are coaches recruiting them but this family is the one that hasn’t put much work into recruiting. The coaches found them and have been showing interest. This family doesn’t start getting in gear until April or May when the college coaches tell them flat out that they want to view their highlight video. The month of March is normally slow as coaches are preparing for the start of spring practice and extending more offers doesn’t happen all that often.

I took a look back at one smaller state that I have tracked their recruiting attention over the years. This state doesn’t produce a ton of Division I-A/BCS talent but enough that college coaches from across the country will always take a serious look at their top prospects.

The one thing I saw is that over the last two years, the majority of the scholarships extended were ones to players who already had offers on the table. This is because coaches react differently when they know that there is another school in their area/conference that thinks this athlete is a Division I-A player. I have stressed that scholarships breed scholarships and that is especially true in the month of May.

I also found only one case where an athlete received his first scholarship offer during the month of March. You may be asking yourself why but that question is pretty obvious if you think about it. College coaches normally hold Junior Days in January and February in order to bring their top recruits onto campus. One of the main reasons that they do this is to see if the athlete passes the eyeball test. If you are listed at 6-foot-5 and appear to be 6-foot-3, chances are strong that an offer won’t be coming your way.

These coaches use the eyeball test, your highlight video, and other research they have done about your character in order to determine if you are scholarship worthy at this point in the process. Because most coaches have seen the film at this point, if they confirm your size (and it is big), then they may step forward with an offer. The problem is that unless you attend their Junior Day, you will be unable to be given the eyeball test until the evaluation period begins in April.

There are occasional exceptions where an athlete will finally get his highlight video out and then coaches are impressed by it. That does happen. But the majority of scholarship offers for juniors in March only come when there are other offers on the table. Follow the national recruiting sites for Rivals and Scout and you will see that both sites follow this logic.

For seniors, there may be a few major college scholarship offers for athletes who have finally qualified academically to play at that level. Chances are very slim that a full qualifier from day one will be given an offer this late in their senior years.

As for sophomore, since very few are invited to Junior Days, it means that the coaches will have to rely on the upcoming evaluation period. Coaches don’t offer sophomores all that frequently but when they do, they want to at least visit the high school and bump into them. This bump will confirm their size and see if offering them would be worth it this early.